This invention relates to a kind of technology which is effective when applied to management of secondary data in a knowledge base for intelligent information processing such as deductive reasoning.
With the recent development of memory technology and high-speed processors, the capacity and computational processing ability of engineering work stations (EWS) or the like have remarkably been improved. Utilization of an intelligent information processing system such as an expert system has therefore been expected. In the present situation, however, such a system cannot always be utilized by a user to obtain a satisfactory result.
This is because it is very difficult to form a large-scale knowledge base, more specifically, a knowledge base on a large amount of fact of actual objects. That is, there is a case of knowledge of a fact being expressed in various forms such as diagrams, flow sheets, figures and the like. Such data can not always be suitably processed by intelligent information processing.
For example, for computer-aided design/drawing of a large-scale plant facilities, it is necessary for conventional design systems to check the facilities with respect to safety and operational performance by inputting a large amount of information on elements of the facilities in a form suitable for knowledge processing with a computer separately of drawings prepared by CAD.
With respect to knowledge of rules and reasoning, needs for newly forming and adding knowledge may also arise frequently during the process of forming a knowledge base and performing knowledge processing. For example, if an accident occurs in a plant facility, it is necessary to search for a dangerous place in other facilities where a similar accident may take place to enable prevention of other similar accidents.
According to conventional methods for facility diagnosis or the like, some kinds of accidents are previously assumed and data and reasoning rules are correspondingly determined. It is therefore very difficult to cope with problems found later or newly appeared.
In conventional systems, it is difficult to directly utilize the information obtained by design- and drawing-employing CAD or the like to check, evaluate or search necessary items at a design- or drawing-inputting stage or the object obtained after the design, and drawing. It is basically necessary to manually input data Into a computer and to manually instruct the computer, because data obtained by design and drawing employing CAD and a knowledge base on facts of constituent elements expressed on drawings are separately formed and independent of each other.
For a large-scale design, a system may be arranged in which data on facts is input with respect to each target problem, and corresponding rules and knowledge are combined into a program. However, the development of such a system requires a great deal of labor for inputting data, and this system is therefore impracticable in terms of development time and cost.
The recent development of electronic computer systems has also enabled, for example, employing a computer-aided design (CAD) or the like project process in which information on the constructions and the shapes of component parts of a design object and the connective relationships between the component parts are input as drawings Into a computer; Literal/numerical information on design conditions, specifications and the like are accumulated into an engineering data base, and these categories of information are accumulated as primary data in the computer.
However, it is difficult to use such primary data as an object of intelligent information processing such as deductive reasoning, and there is a need to reprocess primary data to produce secondary data.
Secondary data thereby produced is, for example, knowledge data on facts expressed in the form of predicates for deductive reasoning. For the conversion of primary data into secondary data, primary data must be processed mainly by manual operations in conventional method.
When information is externally added to primary data to change specifications or the like, there is a need to repeat the operation for conversion into secondary data each time such information is supplied. In this type of system, therefore, the majority of the amount of intelligent information processing operation is assigned to this processing for conversion and re-formation into secondary data, resulting in a reduction in the efficiency of the main deductive reasoning processing.